Aboard the Enterprise, Kirk and the rest of the crew watch as the jumper banks – and then disappears. The entity swipes at the emptiness. A beat. Then it slowly turns as –
Another shuttle launches from the Waldorf Astoria. The scavenger shuttle. It fires its laser cannons, then punches through the entity’s chest. Instantly, the shuttle goes dark, its engines dead, and drifts.
Maybourne stares at the screen in slack-jawed wonder: “Fuuuu,”
“ – scinating indeed,”interrupts Thor. “The entity is a self-sustaining energy pattern. Contact with the shuttle forced the smaller vessel into resonance with its own, collapsing its internal systems.”
“Captain, the puddle jumper is aboard,”reports Data at Ops. “All hands accounted for.”
At which point, the freighter’s core goes critical, setting off a chain reaction of explosions across the length of the Waldorf Astoria, catching the entity in its wake.
It responds, roiling in on itself, forming and reforming, arms, eyes, briefly a face, a woman’s face, there and gone before anyone can be sure they saw it.
Then Pilot stiffens in his cradle: “Captain. The scavenger vessel. It’s powering weapons.”
“On screen,”commands Kirk.
The pirate cruiser swings its bulk towards the Enterprise, gun ports glowing. Whatever salvage drew it here is gone, blown to atoms, and the only ship left to blame is theirs.
“Multiple projectiles incoming,”Pilot reports. “Impact in ten seconds.”
“Shields up,”orders Kirk.
The Enterprise rocks as the volley slams home, consoles flaring, the bridge pitching under them.
“They’re preparing another volley,”says Pilot.
Kirk grips the arm of his chair and leans forward. What does he do?
A) Return fire. Ready phasers and photon torpedoes and show them what a Galaxy-class can do.
B) Hail them. Explain you didn’t destroy the freighter, and this fight helps no one.
C) Go to warp. Break off and leave the scavengers, the entity, and the dying freighter behind.
CHOOSE!
Previously On Amalgaverse…
You and 19 others have been stranded in an amalgam universe of myriad SF realities. All 19 are sci-fi’s Best of the Best. And then there’s you, uniquely qualified given your encyclopedic knowledge garnered from your world where these characters, their technologies, and their stories are fiction, beloved TV shows you have watched time and again. Together, all 20 of you have set off on the Enterprise-D, tasked with finding a way home.
For your first mission, you’ve decided to investigate a seemingly derelict freighter broadcasting an emergency beacon. An away team and puddle jumper have been dispatched to the ghost ship, anomalous energy pulses making beaming and communications a challenge.
After parking and cloaking the puddle jumper in the freighter’s hangar, the team crosses the airless bay into the ship proper. There, they make the decision to check out the waning energy signature of a containment field en route to the bridge. But they immediately encounter a utility unit that advances on them menacingly. Rommie connects to it and relays a shut down command that causes the robot to collapse.
Further along, they encounter a sealed door and Rommie informs them that the compartment beyond is exposed to space. She suggests locking down their current section and then unsealing the door since it’s the most direct route to the bridge – and that ebbing containment field. They do so. The door slides open to reveal an immense hull breach complicating their progress. Rommie leaps over the chasm and secures a tether to the other side, allowing the rest of the team to pull themselves over. But when they attempt to open the door to the next section, they hit an impasse. The door remains locked and will not respond to their commands.
O’Neill blows the lock with C4, allowing them entry into the adjoining compartment where they discover an android in a containment field, completing its regenerative cycle. When the android awakens, it informs them it is the caretaker of this freighter, the Waldorf Astoria, and warns them off pillaging its contents. Daniel assures the android, Maia, that they harbor no ill intent and asks for her assistance in accessing the bridge and restoring ship’s systems. But Maia remains suspicious. She requests a peer-to-peer interface with Rommie to confirm that your presence on the freighter is, in fact, benign. Rommie agrees.. Maia explains that her memory stores and parts of the ship were damaged after the freighter encountered an atemporal force during FTL transit. She offers to help the team access the ship’s systems in exchange for their assistance in tracking down and eradicating a mysterious entity that has boarded the freighter.
Maia helps the team access the bridge where they discover the freighter’s analysis of its encounter with the atemporal entity has yielded harmonics very similar to residual energy signatures from their crossings into this reality. This could hold the key to their return home, but the data is corrupted and Rommie needs time to decipher it. Daniel, meanwhile, notes that the life sign he detected earlier is fading, and he wants to check it before it’s too late. But Maia flags a more immediate concern – the likelihood that the ship’s core is in danger of going critical unless they vent the drive.
The decision is made to split the team.
McKay and Maia head to engineering where Rodney is startled by a half-dozen mechanical spiders that he, at first, assumes to be replicators. But Maia assures him they are simply the ship’s repair bots. Maia vents the drive but McKay’s reading of the data confirms they have only delayed the inevitable. In approximately 42 minutes, the core will go critical and the ship – and everyone on board – will be destroyed.
Jack and Daniel discover a wounded woman in a crew uniform who warns that the android cannot be trusted while, back on the Enterprise, Kirk weighs what to do about a scavenger ship that has just dropped into sub-light and dispatched a shuttle to the Waldorf Astoria.
Jack and Daniel, unaware of the arrival of the scavenger ship, elect to hide Rhea, the survivor, in a utility room while they head back to confront Maia, the android. But before they move, they receive an update from McKay, informing them that the core is about to go critical in less than 40 minutes, and that he and Maia are headed to the bridge. Jack radios Rommie and orders her to scan Maia and find out if she is telling the truth. If Maia refuses, she needs to be shut down.
Jack and Daniel prepare to fall back to the hangar bay when they hear someone approach. They duck into hiding as a sealed section opens to reveal a group of diverse group of mercs have boarded. Daniel warns them that the ship’s core will be going critical. They don’t believe him and a firefight ensures. Jack and Daniel are pinned down with time ticking down when – dozens of spider bots come scurrying around the corner and drive the scavengers back through an aft compartment, which slides shut behind them.
Enter Maia, Rommie and McKay. Rommie confirms that Maia is not their enemy – and her actions confirm it. They check on Rhea in the utility room – and she has seemingly disappeared.
At the super, Rodney convinces Maia to come with them as, by staying behind, she would essentially be destroying Traugott property – herself. Maia concedes Rodney’s logic is sound and joins the away team.
The puddle jumper flies out of the Waldorf Astoria where it encounters the atemporal entity that seems to take semi-human form and reach out for them.
Leave a Reply